Susannah Martin’s Paintings Explore the Idea of Returning to the Wild

Like Adams and Eves freshly banished from the Garden of Eden, Susannah Martin’s characters wander through lush, wild landscapes wide-eyed and bewildered at their surroundings. Martin is an American-born artist who has been based in Berlin since 1991. She sees painting nude figures as a continuation of a long lineage of artists who have used the human body to signify what she refers to as man in his purest state.

This unadulterated state of harmony with nature stands in contrast to the artificial environments that house our urban existence. Martin’s characters often look awkward and at odds with the untamed forests they find themselves in, signaling at our collective disconnect with living off the land. Her paintings offer us voyeuristic glimpses into these characters’ lives as they strip away their facades and confront nature in its beauty and horror.